Ever since the east end of Eden closed,
men have been drawn back to Babel. It is the root of our
roots, and holds a strange allure that is difficult to describe.
The geography is bleak, not lending itself to the physical at
all; but
a part of us died there, so perhaps our soul quests for what was
left behind. There is a spiritual Babel (confusion),
which is still drawing men today as well. We have come a long way
to get nowhere; but the circumferaneous path of our depravity,
serves, if nothing else, to at least dispel the flat earth theory. American
Idol is no miniseries, it is reality and abounds everywhere we
look. In this time of the end (cf. Daniel 12:4), when many run to and fro, and knowledge has
been increased; we have refined idolatry, dressed it up, and
delivered it out of the desert of Dura. What was 90 feet
and stationary in the province of Babylon, has morphed itself
into 54 inches of flat screen. Presently, it pumps images
directly to our quarters in chameleon color, able to satisfy
even the most discriminating idolater. No longer must we
be inconvenienced by the idol insisting we come to it, now it
comes to us at the push of a button. That is all very
sheik to a world scrambling to replace GOD!
"What say I then? that the
idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to
idols is any thing? But I say, that the things which the
Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to GOD:
and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils."
If idolatry is defined as any
one, or thing, which usurps GOD, then it was born there in the
form of a fruit tree. Eve ate the apple, but her downfall
came through her fellowship with the Devil.
"And what agreement
hath the temple of GOD with idols?"
The answer to this rhetorical is:
none.
It was thus the aged and beloved John's swan song to every
believer that you:
"... keep yourselves from idols. Amen."
Ignore all this to your own peril, for Isaiah,
speaking of final judgment, warns:
"In that day a man shall
cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made
each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats;
To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the
ragged rocks, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of HIS
majesty, when HE ariseth to shake terribly the earth."